"You don't have to be a mass downloader. Someone who downloads a single movie will be logged as well," he said. "If the content was in the top 100 it was monitored within hours, someone will notice and it will be recorded.""

According to the research, there are roughly 10 different monitoring firms logging content. Some were copyright-enforcement organisations, others were security firms and there were even other research labs.

Some of the biggest-scale monitors were harder to identify, because the companies behind them used third-party hosting firms to run the searches for them.

There is no evidence that the data collected by monitoring firms is being used. Dr Chothia said: "Many firms are simply sitting on the data. Such monitoring is easy to do and the data is out there so they think they may as well collect it as it may be valuable in future."

Some copyright owners in Europe and the US are applying for court orders to oblige internet service providers to hand over the physical addresses associated with court orders.

But Graham Cluley, a security expert at Sophos, does not believe that the survey will make a significant difference to the issue of internet piracy.

He said: "I think people have been downloading pirated movies for years and the general public think that it is an acceptable thing to do. most people think that even if it is technically illegal that they are not going to be the ones who are chased up on it. I think the fact that they can be monitored in some cases and they can be tracked in some cases is something which many people are really rather blind to."

Mr Cluley added that copyright owners need to take a more proactive stance on illegal downloads: "If people were to be given a warning on screen, if they were to receive an email telling them we know that you just downloaded an episode of Desperate Housewives or something like that then that may give them a shock and stop them from doing it again."

"The big producers; the entertainment companies in the industry have been trying for years to put a halt to this and quite frankly they haven't done very well"